Burning House
by Bellicose Blue
Summary: Happy endings aren't for the monsters. / a five-part drabble series based on cam's "burning house"
1. I've been sleepwalking

**A/N:** I'm relocating this drabble series from _Proioxis_ because it deserves its own little section. This one is the first of five 1000-word drabbles based off of Cam's _Burning House_ , which is one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. I'll add the other drabbles as time allows.

* * *

 _I've been sleepwalking, been wandering all night_

* * *

The taste of blood lingers in the back of her mind, in her mouth, salty and warm with an undercoat of steel, of ice, but when he kisses her it changes.

She is supposed to be a mental presence as well as a physical one, the shadow that follows just a little too quickly, the sheen of the blade as it curves, teases over exposed flesh. They take her youth, her dark eyes and high voice, and twist her into a weapon.

He's already a weapon, muscle and bronze and eyes a little too cold, a little too fatal, and he captivates her, pins her to the ground as she writhes. He torments her, croons insults like they're lovers' purrs, and she falls in love with him.

They're all crazy in Two, vicious and cutting and far too like the Capitol, and the Capitol loves them for it. But she isn't crazy, not before, anyway. They tell her to be unhinged, insane, and blood floods her mouth, sprays from a boy's back as her knife embeds itself in his skin. He slashes at tributes scarcely more than children and laughs, and she remembers that he didn't need any sculpting to create his image. He's already crazy.

She becomes sadistic, monstrous, laughing as they race through nightmarish landscapes and taunt the others. And he's amused at her petty cruelty, pleased by her flashes of brutality. A gorgeous, nameless girl, a streak of gold beneath the moonlight tugs at his hand, grins up at him, and he sneers at the girl and shoves her away.

The girl dies just before daybreak and she grins at him, licks her lips as the dead girl's former partner shifts nervously from foot to foot. They're both crazy now, and the boy knows it, but he's bound to them as surely as if he's chained to them. They'll kill him before he can escape, and he isn't strong enough against the both of them. Perhaps he hopes they'll turn on each other first. His smile is false, brittle next to their triumphant ones.

That boy dies a few days later, after they'd split up beneath columns of smoke and ruin and shattered bones. She sees his face in the sky, patterned on the stars, and turns to her living companion. He is as remote and cold as the stars, but she tastes warmth and copper when she kisses him. He touches the nape of her neck with icy fingers and she gasps, curls into him as trumpets blare and it's absolution, it's freedom.

This is not a love story. Theirs is not a happy ending. They are not the heroes, and this is not their redemption. This is him with his hands tangled in her hair and hatred simmering beneath his skin, the delicacy of her bones so tantalizing he has to rip himself from her before he can snap her, can break her. This is her with the blood bitter in her mouth and her chest surging with each breath that rasps in her throat, rattles in her lungs, watching him like they're wolves about to rip the other to shreds, like he's Romeo about to kill himself over some fleeting fancy of love and she's too late to stop him. They are fire and ashes and destruction and death and he snarls, pulls her closer.

She is beautiful beneath the starlight, all coy shadows and gleaming teeth. A cut curls up from under her eye and tears its way across her face, just barely splitting her skin, and he runs a thumb across it and smirks when she inhales.

If they win- when they win- they'll have authority like no other Victor in over seven decades. They'll command attention in the Capitol, and who wouldn't want to align themselves with the vicious young couple? She imagines returning in splendor, living in luxury, the screams of the crowds as they parade through the streets. She tastes a honeyed sweetness beneath the copper in her mouth and this, this is what happiness is.

He gazes down at her like he's drowning and she's oxygen, like he's fixated on her, obsessed with her. He's obsessed with the other girl, the nuisance who's escaped death at their hands several times already, but it's the kind of mania born of hatred. His fascination with her is different in a way that makes her shudder. There's no gentle ardor in his eyes, just fervor, but he grins down at her and asks her who they'll kill first.

The next morning, he races off in one direction, tracking the redheaded girl who'd leaped out first, and she chases after the other girl until it all goes to hell.

A massive farmboy tosses her to the ground and she scuttles frantically backwards, anything to put as much space between the broken boy and herself as she can manage. Oh, the Games might have refined her partner's viciousness, enhanced her own innate instability, but they've _ruined_ this boy. He was kind once, she thinks as he yanks her up, the kind of boy who'd work countless hours to be able to support himself and then throw it all away on the next poor victim of political corruption. Beneath the feral snarl on his face, there's a kind of peace, so warped and splintered her hands seize and her mind blanks until she remembers she has a voice.

She screams.

It seems to rile him, that scent of life and death and something horribly, painfully in between, and he slams her head with a rock and drops her body to the earth. The broken boy sprints away as she gasps for fleeting breath and another, just as broken, rushes over, but they both know it's too late for her. She breathes promises of glory as she dies, and he clings to her words, grips her hands as she shudders and lies still.

Blood sings in the back of his mind even as hers dims.


	2. I did you wrong

**A/N:** I'm almost considering expanding this past five parts because it's so much fun to write. First and probably only time I'll write Thresh.

* * *

 _Trying to take what's lost and broke and make it right_

* * *

His thoughts fly faster than his feet as he tears through the fields of wheat, stalks snapping and writhing and clawing at his face. The pain is nothing more than an annoyance, a sprinkle of rain beneath a blazing sun, and Thresh ignores the thin slices covering his skin even as more gash open. If he can't escape his pursuer, the brief discomfort he feels right now won't be anything compared to the agony he knows he can expect. If he's caught, he's dead.

Hot on his trail is a boy-no-longer, a brute transformed by grief into something barely human. Cato's got two inches and at least twenty pounds of muscle on him, and if Thresh were somehow able to beat him in hand-to-hand combat, he'd still have to contend with Cato's sword. It's his weapon of choice, a deadly length of silver that Thresh can see shimmering as Cato sprints. Cato is too close, well able to throw a knife and send him crashing to the ground, but somehow Thresh is certain he won't. This boy, he thrives on blood and sport. He wants a physical, personal form of vengeance. His vicious little partner would've taken any shot she could get, but that's not a problem now.

Thresh thinks of the broken corpse he'd left in front of the Cornucopia, a tiny, frail girl with glassy eyes, and feels ashamed. He'd promised himself before the Games that he'd never kill anyone who hadn't tried to kill him first, and Clove, heartless as she was, had never crossed paths with him. She hadn't even seen him coming.

The girl's pale body morphs in his mind, shrinking and shifting until it's Rue's eyes that are staring blankly up at the sky. _No!_ Thresh barks to himself, shredding the image and running faster. _Clove killed Rue, and I killed Clove. I avenged her._ Despite the certainty in his thoughts, his heart is heavy. Rue was a child. Clove, despite her thirst for blood, was a child. What sort of monster does that make him?

 _(He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.)_

He'd never understood that as a child- how could someone fighting for a just cause ever go astray? Morality, he'd thought once, was purely black and white. Murder was wrong. Murder of a child was even more wrong.

 _But if you win, your District will be spared from starvation another year. Isn't the salvation of thousands of innocent children enough to offset the death of one not-so-innocent one?_

It's the same logic the Capitol uses to justify holding the Games- twenty-three children sacrificed to prevent war from reaching millions. Thresh wants to throw up.

"You know," Cato spits, the first words Thresh has heard him speak throughout the entire chase, unless one counts the scream of inchoate rage he'd released after Clove's cannon had sounded. "Clove was innocent."

Thresh wheezes an incredulous laugh, the air driven unwillingly from his lungs. In all his ponderings about the morality of revenge, he'd never once considered that Clove- vicious, bloodthirsty, murderous Clove- had been _innocent_. What was her kill count, he wonders. Far too high for a girl of fifteen. "Liar," he hisses, knowing he should save his breath but too angry at the idea to ignore it. "She killed Rue. She _laughed_ about it. She was a monster."

"She didn't kill Rue," Cato snarls, the words made both harsher and frailer by the rasp of his voice. He's closer now, closing in as surely as the sun is tracking toward its peak. Thresh can't run any faster- his lungs are burning and his feet are nearly dragging on the ground and he's going to die, he can taste blood in his mouth. "I was with her the whole time- don't you think I'd have noticed if she killed your little friend? You killed the wrong person, Eleven."

Horror fills his mouth like ashes. _He's lying,_ he tries to tell himself, but it's too late. His foot catches on a loose stone and then he's falling face-first toward the ground, striking it with enough force to drive the rest of the air from his lungs. As he tries to stumble to his feet, half-whirling to counter Cato's inevitable onslaught, the boy crashes into him with all of the momentum and fury he possesses, and then they're both on the ground.

It's a short fight. Cato is furious and Thresh is sluggish, drained not by the chase but by his own guilt. Pinned on his back, Thresh spits a tooth and a glob of blood into Cato's eye and grapples with his non-broken hand for something- _anything_ \- to kill the boy with.

His fingers close around a rock.

Cato sees the stone- the size of a small loaf of bread- and goes berserk, and Thresh remembers too late the crumpled body of Clove with the dent in her skull. "How dare you?" he seethes, and if he was angry before, he's enraged past all rationality now. "You going to break me like you broke that little girl?"

Cato grabs Thresh's wrist in his too-hot palms and snaps it. Stars bloom before his eyes, and they're so painful they're almost beautiful. He doesn't remember screaming until he hears it. Water collects in his eyes, streams down his face, and he screams and screams and screams until Cato backhands him hard enough that something rattles. "Do it fast," he pleads _._

But there's no mercy here, not in these Games. Cato bares his teeth in a twisted mockery of a humorous grin. "Consider this your penance," he advises as he pulls out a dainty-looking knife with a cruel, curved blade. Thresh closes his eyes and thinks of the little girl he'd loved as a sister, of the little girl Cato had loved far more, as the tip opens the first cut at his lip.


	3. I couldn't get you out

**A/N:** A double drabble, because I just couldn't restrict myself to 1000 words for this!

* * *

 _I've been sleepwalking, too close to the fire_

* * *

They were supposed to go into the Games together. That was the plan, the one they'd been preparing for since Cato was fifteen and Clove was twelve. Even then they were a glorious team, perfectly-matched and so vicious that their Games would be the highest-rated one as they tore each other to pieces during the finale. They'd trained side-by-side for three long years, over a thousand days devoted to learning the other absolutely. They were supposed to go into the Games together, when Cato was at the cusp of ineligibility and Clove was old enough to slash her way to victory and survive.

But the best-laid plans went awry, as they are so prone to do, which is why when Clove's name rings out through the crowd at the Reaping, it isn't to announce her volunteering. Cato stands stiffly beside the violet-haired escort and watches her ascend the stairs, slowly, cautiously. And the escort beams at Clove and asks if anyone wished to volunteer, and before she can protest, to claim her spot as her own, she's being shoved off the stage by a girl with three years and thirty pounds on her.

She visits him before he leaves, in the stuffy little Justice Building. She sits almost too far away from him, barely within the sphere of polite distance. That's how they've always been, after all: separated by her boundaries. "For you, Clove, I'll make her pay," Cato mutters, staring at the painted ceiling above her head. She answers him with a half-smile, the kind that only pull back the corners of her mouth and leave her eyes untouched, and they never say anything else on the subject. She knows he can read the gratitude she so frequently disguises as contempt. He's always known how to read her.

Instead of the traditional handshake when her time is up, he wraps her in a hug so comforting she can't do anything but reciprocate. It feels like a farewell, and she shakes off the thought with more than a little horror. He isn't leaving, she reassures herself. He'll be back soon, and then everything will be all right.

She can't miss him. She won't. Missing him will mean admitting he's gone.

* * *

She knows he'll win. It's as inevitable as the rising of the sun. Both blondes from One are ditzes, the girl who'd stolen her spot too arrogant for her lack of skill, the two from Four both Reaped and therefore worthless. The boy from Eleven is more of a threat, just as tall as Cato is and nearly as strong, but he's too gentle when he shakes hands with his tiny partner. He's weak for her, and Cato is nothing if not ruthless at exploiting weaknesses.

She only wishes she were there with him.

Clove tracks his progression through the Capitol: the glorious golden tunic he wears on the chariot, the score of 10 he receives during training, the confident, keen interview that leaves the Capitol breathless. His partner is little more than rubble compared to him, worthless, and Clove can't help but think how much better she would be as a tribute.

He breezes through the Bloodbath easily, seizing command of the alliance and slaughtering the unfortunate tributes who happen to get in his way. She's almost jealous, lying there curled up on the couch in front of the screen and huddled in a too-large jacket that may or may not smell like him. His allies are picked off one by one, but he has the honor of flaying his District partner to pieces when she tries to stab him in the back. The girl lies there, throat too raw to scream any more, as the tiny silver parachute floats down. It's a saltshaker. To rub salt in their enemies' wounds has never seemed so literal. Clove will have to pick up extra shifts at the mine in order to pay her rent next month, but it's all worth it to see the glee on his face. Cato and Clove smile as one.

At the feast, he's glorious, smashing the skull of the giant from Eleven against the ground and catching the fleet-footed redheaded slip of a girl with a spear. The girl from Twelve slips around him as he's occupied with retrieving his weapon from Five's corpse and manages to grab her backpack, then flees off into the woods. Cato's injured from his fight with Eleven and too encumbered to chase after her, so instead he lets the hovercrafts pick up the two corpses and leans against the golden walls of the Cornucopia.

The Capitol lets him take one night to rest and heal before they decide to take matters into their own hands. They unleash a pack of mutts so feral Clove wakes up screaming weeks later, all gnashing teeth and cold, deadly eyes. They look nothing so much like Cato and his former alliance with the way they thrill in the chase. But Cato's protected by impenetrable armor, so he manages to stave off the dozen or so that swarm around him long enough to scale the Cornucopia. They can't climb high enough to reach him, so he begins picking them off one by one with the edge of his sword.

One mutt sinks its fangs into his blade and tears it out of his hands, nearly sending him tumbling over the edge right into their frothing jaws. He's frantically searching for a knife, a club, anything when the two from Twelve surge over past the distracted mutts and square off against him. They've brought company of their own, another near-dozen of mutts who lick their wolfish snouts and lunge at them from below.

Cato catches them off-guard and wraps the boy in a headlock, slowly suffocating him as the girl gapes in horror. Somebody's yelling at the television, screaming about his idiocy and begging- screeching- for him to stop talking and snap the boy's neck- _it would be so easy you've done it before please Cato please-_ , and Clove just wants them to shut up so she can focus. He's too far gone to hear them.

She realizes she's the one shouting just as the girl's arrow embeds itself in his hand.

It's so quick after that. The boy in his hold shoves back, knocking him over the edge. Cato falls. He lands roughly. The mutts do not hesitate. They lunge at him. He manages to grab his fallen sword off the ground and fight back, at least for a little while. He remains on his feet for perhaps half an hour. The sword stays in his hand for another hour.

Cato's cannon does not fire for another eight hours.

She watches the scene at the Cornucopia, the whole, bloody thing. She can't seem to bring herself to look away as the mutts tear at the skin exposed from his armor, shredding through muscles and nerves. She sits in front of the screen throughout the entire night, barely even blinking as dawn emerges. He begs for death. The girl shoots him; one final act of mercy. He dies. She can't even move.

Distantly, she's aware that the awful keening sound that makes her throw her hands over her ears is her own, but she can't make herself stop. Why should she? There's no one alive that cares any more.

She's not crying. Clove doesn't cry, never has, never will. At this point, she doesn't think she can. She screams and screams and screams until her voice gives out and she's so light-headed she nearly faints as the walls rattle around her. She wonders why no one's come running to make sure she isn't dying, that yet another prodigy of Two isn't being slowly ripped to pieces before their very eyes. Maybe the screams are all inside her head. Maybe everything was.

But when she looks up at the television again, her pathetic hopes are crushed beneath the berry-stained fingers of the couple from Twelve. There's two Victors this year, and Cato is not among them. She doesn't count herself among them either.

She drags herself out of the house a few days later. Her skin is pale and her ribs jut through her skin and her dark hair hangs limply down her back, but she marches down to the center of town with all of the dignity of a queen. The streets are empty. Cato's body came home today.

She stands at the back of the crowd during Cato's funeral, just as distant from him as they'd been in life. She watches his mother crumple but lift her chin defiantly; watches his brother, just twelve years old, follow the procession with dark eyes. His brother had been a prodigy just like Cato, so proud to follow in his older brother's footsteps. He had quit the Training Center the day that Cato had died.

When the crowd is invited to share their memories of Cato at the wake, Clove slips away. She can't stomach the fakeness, the way girls who had barely even glimpsed him are wiping away tears and boys she knows for a fact were not his friends are telling stories about the person they thought they knew. She doesn't have any stories worth sharing, anyway. Just camaraderie and the flitting half-life of dreams.

She doesn't attend the funeral of the other girl, the one who had stolen her place. She thinks she might do something hateful if she goes, so she doesn't. Better to mourn at home than scream at the girl's grieving parents. She is not the only one broken.

She shows up to training the day after his funeral with an expression that dares anyone to challenge her. They're not supposed to handle weapons if they're emotional. Reaction times are slowed, overall judgment is lowered, skill retention is virtually nonexistent. It's safer for everyone if she would just stay home.

Enobaria corners her in the locker room before she can start dressing for training. She is told in no uncertain terms that she will not be allowed to train. She ignores her mentor, perhaps the first time she's ever done so. Right now she craves the routine of the Academy, the soothing flight of a knife through the air. Enobaria tries to force her out, but eventually gives up when it's apparent that Clove will neither speak nor budge. Only when the Victor is gone does she slump against her locker and release that tight, choked sound in the back of her throat before she erases her feelings once more.

She can't miss him. She won't. Missing him will mean admitting he's dead.

* * *

Clove doesn't volunteer the next year, nor the year after that, nor the year after that, and then she's ineligible, she's free.

She's free.

The years pass, and she grows older. She watches a rebellion rise and fall, crushed beneath the heel of a Capitol assured in its sovereignty. She doesn't really care one way or another. The double Victors, the star-crossed lovers who had killed Cato, are executed live on television. She watches it and finds she can't bring herself to celebrate. There's nothing satisfying about death any more.

She spends hours at Cato's simple marble headstone, silent. She doesn't need to talk. He's always been able to hear her in her thoughts. The years pass, and she rages at his grave, screaming at him and the Capitol and the Games and him until she's crying so hard she can't breathe. The years pass, and she turns to glass, her smile so brittle and her eyes so bleak she thinks she might break. The years pass, and she forgets the sound of his voice, the precise shade of blue of his eyes, the softness of his smile whenever he'd looked at her.

She can't miss him. She won't. Missing him will mean admitting they lost.

 _(she's free)_

She runs her fingers along the cold stone of his grave and wishes she'd died along with him.


	4. I had a dream about a burning house

**A/N:** Italicized quotes are from various versions of Aesop's _The Farmer and the Sea_ and _The Shepherd and the Sea_.

* * *

 _But it's the only place that I can hold you tight_

* * *

 _"Oh sea, how deceitful and merciless you are!"_

The girl from Twelve is fire: lightning searing across the night sky, the snap of a match in an empty room, ashes and embers. And if she is fire, then Clove is the sea: relentlessly crashing against the shore, serene to gaze at from afar, treacherous turmoil in her depths. And if Clove is the sea, then Cato is the moon: beautiful, ethereal, and distant, _cold_ , but she's captivated by him anyway. (she's the sea, and she's drowning in him.)

And if Cato is the moon, then Clove supposes that must make Glimmer the sun (radiant, golden, so beautiful she burns), but she quickly discards the idea when something slippery and jealous takes hold of her chest. Besides, she reassures herself, Glimmer won't last long, anyway. She'll die, and Cato will stop fawning over her and return to the joy of the hunt.

It doesn't happen.

Oh, Glimmer does die, a twisted mockery of her beauty, but a piece of Cato dies with her. He's silent now, rough and remote and scathing, _blistering_ when he deigns to speak to Clove, and she can't help but snarl back. Their hatred is so corrosive that Marvel can't stand to be near them, preferring instead the company of the ashen-faced boy who'd rigged their traps.

 _"You can look so inviting and then you destroy all who venture out upon you!"_

One day, when the supplies are vanished in a column of smoke and Marvel's scattered with the cooling body of the boy from Three at Cato's feet, she kisses him. Maybe there's a tiny part of her that thinks she can bring him out of his darkness, that maybe he'll finally understand. But instead of pulling her closer, he shoves her away, _hard_. There's anger scrawled across his face and disgust, so much disgust, but she speaks before he does.

Her words are perhaps the one thing she wields more lethally than her knives, and she uses them to their full force now. Cato's been on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing before, but she's always held back. There are some barriers you just don't cross, some lines it's safer not to teeter over. But her hurt and her humiliation and her bitterness boil over past any inhibitions. He flinches when she brings up Glimmer, so she does it again, and again and again and again until she's screeching and he's suffocating in her cruelty.

She knows Cato, knows his vulnerabilities, so she exploits them to full effect. All those little insecurities about him that she'd filed away for future reference, his fear of failure, of losing, of death, she twists them all. Dimly she knows she's just ruined any chance they ever had of being friends, let alone lovers, but she can't make herself stop. Her mouth keeps moving and the words keep spewing vitriol until, finally, she stops.

Clove takes a sadistic little thrill at the sheer devastation her words have caused, but that all freezes when she sees the way he looks at her. His eyes are hard, cold, and she knows it's only the years of camaraderie they've built that keep him from slicing her open on the spot. He's still weak for her, and if it isn't the kind of weakness she'd prefer, well, she's nothing if not adaptable.

The Games had always been just that- games- for Cato, and she's the sole witness to the moment in which they become his destiny.

 _"Deceitful and tempting element! In vain you try to engage me a second time."_

District Two always sticks together, he'd hissed at her after she'd unleashed her wrath upon him. They're still an alliance for now, though how much longer that'll last is a question with high stakes in the brightly-lit gambling halls of the Capitol. Clove thinks it'll last just through the feast, when she's obtained the item she supposedly so desperately needs, but of course she doesn't tell Cato that. If he'd been distant before, he's completely sealed away now. Not a single flicker of emotion escapes him as he bids her a terse farewell and goes off to conceal himself on the opposite side of the Cornucopia.

The first victim bursts forth, but she squashes her instinct to chase, to hunt. The first kill will be Cato's. They'd agreed on that much the night before as she sat too far from him with her arms wrapped around herself, trying not to slip back into the mindset of cruelty that had destroyed their friendship for good.

So Cato rushes off to slaughter the nimble redhead from Five, and she's left licking her lips as the girl from Twelve dashes in, trailing flames in her wake. Water douses fire, consumes it so utterly that it is unable to regrow on the same spot. She's not afraid until the boy from Eleven, with the build and resolve of a mountain, hoists her in the air and splits her skull.

She's still the little girl who he taught to throw a spear and smirk at the misfortunes of others, and she knows that when Cato looks at her crumpled figure, he sees a smaller version with a tear-streaked face and a sprained leg from a fall off the ropes course before she'd learned to never let anyone see her cry. So instead of chasing after the boy who's run off with the item he needs most or killing the girl with the head wound and her sickly boyfriend by proxy, he kneels by her side and takes her hand in his.

She opens her mouth, feeble breaths rasping in her throat, and he must think she's about to apologize, for he leans down quickly, eagerly. But instead she delivers one last parting shot of cruelty and laughs as he screams in wordless rage.

She dies with blood on her hands and a smile on her face.

 _"You are a pitiless element of nature and an enemy to mankind."_


	5. Oh, and I don't wanna wake up

**A/N:** Dedicated to Amie (chocolate chip homicide) for being crazy supportive of my silly little drabbles and for inspiring this silly little one in particular.

I know this collection is only supposed to have five parts, so I'm calling it complete for now, but there's definitely a possibility of more in the future.

* * *

 _In this burning house_

* * *

Wake up at five. Turn off the alarm clock before it goes off and make the bed. It's not _your_ bed; you own nothing here. Shrug into Tuesday's training outfit, pull your hair back tight enough to hurt, and rush to breakfast. Choke down whatever dense paste they're serving and avoid the bullies with their feet outstretched far enough to trip you and send you flying. You've gotten good at dancing around trouble over the years.

Slip into the hallway among the flood of the crowd. Ignore the glances like knives from the other girls and the knowing smirks from the boys. Resist the urge to tap your feet as you wait for the doors to the Training Center to be opened; fidgeting betrays a lack of confidence and as such is not tolerated. Catch a glimpse of your best friend above the crowd. Call out to him, keeping your voice level and imperious, for how else is your too-high, too-sweet voice ever going to make you a leader? And you do want to be a leader, want it more than anything else in the world, for your mentor has taught you that dominance is the only way to ensure your survival, and you are desperate to stay alive.

Stand close to your best friend, but not too close. The girls from One always play the role of the temptress, and you're too small and cold to convince anyone you're anything special. You'll just have to show them.

 _Show them_. You lick your lips as another knife whistles through the air, embedding itself in a target on the opposite end of the gym. It's a bullseye, like always. You can't help it that you're just that good.

 _Show them_. Struggle across the ropes course, always pushing yourself to be faster, stronger, _better_. Catch a glimpse of your rival, currently first in the class, and clamber into them. Accidentally, of course. Shout a false apology to their crumpled figure on the floor. Bask in the praise of your mentor's tight smile and finish the course.

 _Show them_. Shoulder aside some other students: nameless, faceless, irrelevant. Give your opponent a cold, hollow stare as you circle each other like wolves bristling for dominance. Make the first move. Slide past their defenses and draw a line of crimson down their back, wrap your other hand around their throat, kick their legs out from under them and fling them to the ground. They underestimated you, cold little she-wolf that you are. They won't make the same mistake twice, but they don't have to. You've already won.

Accept the terse nod of your mentor. Preen in the reluctant envy of your peers, but don't turn your back on them. Never turn your back on them. You've been taught to seize every advantage in every way that you can, and you know they've been taught the same. You really can't blame them for trying.

Step on a scale at the back of the gym. Feel your heart sink when a nearby trainer glances at the number and shakes their head. Ignore the rumblings of your stomach as you slip into a side room and paint on a façade of arrogance and brashness and vibrant youth. Sit up straight and answer their questions about friends you don't have, a family you don't remember, until your cheeks hurt from smiling. Drape yourself in a long, weighted dress and step into a pair of too-tall heels. You've worn these so often you could wrestle in them. Parade back and forth, back and forth, until all you can see in the mirror is a mask.

Practice your posture as you take notes on old Games videos. Lick your lips at a swing of an axe you'd have flinched at months before. Feel victory sing in your veins, pooling on the floor around you like golden ichor, and lap it up. It tastes like blood, like tears, like sweat, and you lick it from the blades of your knives, the wounds on your wrists. There's nothing sweeter, not in the whole goddamned world.

Stumble out of the darkened room and run into your friend, your best friend, though lately you've been wondering if you really need the companionship after all. Touch the flecks of blood on his cheek and grumble about the unfairness of it all- why don't _you_ ever get to kill the prisoners? Ignore the haunted look in his eyes, the pallor of his skin. He's still young. They all start out this way, and then they learn. They always do. After all, you did.

Go back to the gym and train a little bit longer until you're seeing spots and you're so lightheaded you just might collapse on this bloodstained floor. Drink water until your stomach bulges and bloats; that's all you'll be having for dinner tonight. Check the rankings on the board and grin when you see yours at the top. You won't be smiling long. The sands are always shifting and the wheel always rolling, but you're at the top for now, and that's all that matters.

Return to your room and shower, scrubbing off the day's filth and watching as the water runs red. You think that maybe if you scrub hard enough, you'll be clean. But you don't want to be. You can't even imagine crawling back into the light- would you burn? would you bleed? Lie on your bed and watch the blades of the fan spin around the ceiling, over and over and over until you're dizzy. Try to sleep, but only dream. Dream of silver slicing through bone and blood brightening the skies and a crown so heavy you can barely stand. Dream of screams and sobs and rattling gasps and water seeping through your fingers before you can catch it. Dream of winning. Dream of dying. Your dreams and your nightmares, they're one and the same.

Maybe, if you close your eyes, you won't wake up.


End file.
